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Weaving Stage V: Waking
Chapter One
Bright light shot like lightning across my eyelids, dark blue and yellow blots tattooing the darkness.
Hushed and rushed voices.
Beneath me, something cold and firm like metal.
Heart pounding so loudly.
The feeling of cold ice piercing my temples.
Muscles whimpering with too much electricity.
I opened my eyes, but through my migraine aura I could only make out shadow people bending over me, away from me, moving to the side and whispering.
Trying to sit up, I felt some type of restraints tug at my wrists.
"...the fact that only onewould be..."
"...saw it with my owneyes, Helen! Are you calling me-"
"Listen, with no contact, we can't..."
"-Help-" I tried to shout to the shadows congregating around me but my voice was tight, coming out as weakly as a puff of smoke.
The strangers stopped talking immediately.
One of them turned to face me.
Apparently a puff of smoke was still enough of a sign to catch their attention.
"I'm contacting the admiral."
"You're reaching above yourself, Commander. Iwill...contact the admiral."
"Jim! This is still mypatient, damn it!"
Things were growing clearer.
My eyes adjusted to the painful lights: some people left the room through automatic doors and a dark-haired man was looking at me with a strange expression.
"What-?" I tried again, when images slowly bobbed up to the rhythm of a blinding headache.
A grainy screen.
Flames, licking orange and red.
Flames?
"Still have that headache?" The strange man had moved closer to my bedside. He was dressed in a foreign uniform and reaching towards me with an instrument that looked like a small ear thermometer.
I jerked from his touch- and a static-like shock reminded me I was shackled.
"It's alright, I'm a doctor," He assured me, pointing to the logo on his uniform. The symbol meant nothing to me.
"What does that do?" I asked, looking at the tool in his hand. I could still feel my voice box over-stretch just to speak.
"This? It's an injection to help the compound migraine. Your heart rate is pretty high so I'm giving you another one for your blood pressure and something for your sore throat." I felt myself tense as he pressed the instrument to my neck. There was a quick pop- something like a flick against my skin. "...And there you go."
His accent!
"You're American?" I eagerly asked.
"Born and bred," the doctor replied without looking up from his gadget.
"The south?"
He gave me a strange look of surprise, then smiled.
"And you'refrom the west."
I nodded, looking down at the strange handcuffs that restrained me to the bed: bright blue light encircling my wrists, latched to some device on the sides of the bed.
"I'm Dr. McCoy. You're safe, this is- like the surgery. Do you know where you are, Miss Averly?" He adjusted my bed so I was sitting up.
"How do you know that name?" I demanded angrily, though I was angrier at the tears that pricked my eyes. "From your sickresearch? Or the people you've had here before me?"
"Easy there-" Dr. McCoy put a hand on my arm. "No one here wants to hurt you."
I looked at him- scoffingly, at first.
But I saw a glimmer, a glimmer of something that was soft and hard at the same time.
Kindness.
Mercy.
Gentleness .
I focused on the feeling of his touch:
No-nonsense. Clever. Professional yet personal.
Sensitive but guarded possible loss of spouse? Kind, firm bedside manner.
Trustworthy.
My mind seemed to blur like an old camera.
Kind - trustworthy- ? that didn't sound right.
" Whyam I handcuffed?" I asked, taking a rattling breath to reign in my emotions.
"Well, you have some pretty violent associates, Miss Averly."
"Don't call me that!" I spat, then, remembering his reading, I sighed and explained more gently, "My name is Wrenne."
Dr. McCoy gave me another strange look of surprise- he certainly did have a lot of those expressions. "You're not Sylene Averly?" He asked, leaning back in his seat.
"...that's my mother's name," I explained reluctantly. "...and I don't have anythingto do with the Prometheus Project orthe Botany Bay Recovery- please, just listen to me-" I tried to lean in but the restraints wouldn't let me- so I reached out with my emotions. "-it looks like you're under the misconception that I'm valuable. I'm not valuable .There's noransom coming. Unless you're low on books or medical staff, there's nothing I could even offer-" McCoy opened his mouth to speak but I wasn't about to give him the chance- "Doctor, we're countrymen." Damn those stinging tears. "...we need to stick together."
"Bones..."
McCoy turned around, facing a man with dark-blond hair and soft eyes that flashed in a fascinating fashion. There was that uniform again- but this one, golden-colored. A white haired woman in the same outfit hurried to stand beside him.
"If Subject 73 is conscious, we do not-," She began, but the blond man interrupted her with a great deal of irritation- his eyes flicking from soft to fiery:
" Commander Litige."
She blushed, pursing her lips and clutching her hands behind her back.
"Dammit, Helen, this is still my patient!" McCoy snapped up from his chair, his authority falling into proper place as if it were his shadow.
"Bones," The blond man sounded exasperated as he rubbed a thumb up the bridge of his nose.
"No, Jim! If shethinks we're just sitting back and spinning yarns while the rest of the ship is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, then shedoesn't have her head on straight!" McCoy stood across from the woman, Litige. "With all due respect to yourstation, you must observe mine."
"...you're right, I'm sorry, Leonard," She sighed, running a hand over her eyes. "I'm sorry, Captain...I'm just- exhausted, we're all...we're-."
"Shock and trauma," McCoy nodded, his anger reeling back politely as he allowed compassion's tide to flood it over.
"No need to explain it to us, wewere on the ship with him," the captain exchanged a glance with McCoy. "Commander, why don't you go ahead and take leave for the rest of your shift. Get some sleep."
"I'd make that an order," the doctor added. "You've been running yourself ragged, Helen. Let me give you something to help you sleep…"
McCoy glanced back at me, and with a jolt I remembered I was a part of this scene. "Commander, Captain- this is Wrenne Averly."
Neither of them spoke- the commander or the captain. They just stared at me in that way you see someone without really seeing at all; as if I were some fish in a bowl.
Or a grotesque exhibit.
Anger, fear, anger, fear, confusion, anger, fear, ang- no use, I thought. I was too upset to distinguish my emotions from theirs, or from anyone else.
"Wrenne, this is Commander Litige, and this is the captain of our sh-" The instant McCoy mentioned her name, Litige turned on her heel and left. "For hell's sake, Helen! Wait- let me get you that medication!"
My stomach constricted with a sharp coldness as he left- this, the only man I remotely knew. The only tie to some type of humanity among my kidnappers. The tense silence between the captain and me only fed my panic.
"So...Sylene isn'tyour name."
We were both prickled all over. That much I could read.
While I did feel so guarded, so tensed and afraid, separately, I felt a strange sense of wonder from running into two other Americans.
Such different emotional threads weaving together created a disturbingly detailed, surreal tint to the scene.
"No, it isn't my name," I replied tersely.
"Well you went to a lot of trouble to make us think otherwise."
"Maybe you should have just askedme my name and I could've cleared the whole thing up for you," I answered sarcastically.
"I thought I'd give it the personal touch and wait for you to wake up."
"Personal touch, right, that's great. Everyone lovesa personal touch to a kidnapping."
" Kidnapping?" The captain furrowed his brow, his boyish eyes lightening with surprise. "Did you...have a place in mind where you wanted to wake up?" An incredulous smile crept up his lips.
Tongue-in-cheek.
Confident.
Over-confident.
"Don't you trivialize this, you son of a bitch!" I snapped, jerking forward, feeling my cheeks flush with indignation and anxiety while the restraints seemed to further constrict my wrists as if they were preparing to digest my body whole. "You are stealinga person's life! The existence of one of your owncountrymen! Do you understandthat? Do you really?"
"Miss Averly, you are in no danger- I promise you that," the captain leaned forward and while my instincts pushed me to interrupt, the bright shine of sincerity in his voice shocked me into silence. "You are on the USS Enterprise. I'm Captain James Kirk. Bones- our head medical officer," He corrected himself. "...he estimates that you've been in suspended animation for over two hundred years. We ran into your vessel floating adrift and your cryotube was inside."
I felt my breathing. I felt the walls constrict like the cuffs on my wrists. My heartbeat became
impossible to ignore- fluttering between palpitations and a cold stillness.
It's a trick.
"The date is 2263.20-"
No, please- !
I hunched over, my psyche twisting into a form too large and painful for my body.
"-which makes it between 263 years and 283. It's difficult to pinpoint the exact time since-"
" Stop! Stop it, stop!" I heard my own voice and I was screaming. I was still hunched over. I saw my lap, dressed in some kind of scrubs made of a foreign material. I felt hot tears. I felt my cheeks fired with emotion.
I was repeating myself- "Stop," over and over, my voice softening with each repetition. I couldn't silence myself, I couldn't change the words. I was rocking back and forth as much as the restraints would allow me.
Too fast.
Too fast.
It was all too fast.
I heard voices around me- my senses functioning in a detached mode, separate from my sense of self and emotion.
"Miss-," The captain, holding back his concern, trying to hold to some calm and extend it to me. "Wrenne? Wrenne, it's alright-Wrenne,look at me,look me in the eye- it's alright, you're going to be alright-."
"Jim! Jim, what the hell-?" The doctor. He snapped quickly into a professional tone. I saw a hand placed on my knee. Masculine, bulging around the knuckles. Dark hair dotting his fingers.
"Wrenne. Wrenne, I want you to listen carefully to my- Spock-! Get out of here, we need less-!"
And then a tide rolled in, steadily and naturally like a straight line.
I could feel it, like gentle cold on a burn.
The vice loosened.
I straightened, looking to the source of relief as if it were as obvious as a candle in the dark.
A tall man- taller than the captain and the doctor.
Black hair and high, elegant cheekbones.
Pointed ears.
Eyes the firm calm of steel gray snow.
He reached out his hand, cupping mine in his. Carefully running his thumb down my palm to the pulse at my wrist, then back up to the center of my hand.
You are safe.
No- no I'm not-!
You are safe .
I never- I never thought they'd doit, never- they could've killed me- why didn't they just kill me!
You are safe. Do not fight the current. It will take you to a gentle pond.
And only then I realized I was staring into his eyes- steel gray snow and ice and calm.
I felt that natural wilting- that relieving, natural wilting of a body relaxing into the embrace of rest.
As I sunk into the lapping rhythm of the stream,
I saw something glisten in his eyes-
Something I hadn't noticed-
Something I wouldn't have expected to be there, in those eyes of steel, solid snow:
a meteor shower
fiery and passionate,
but cropped small into the background.
A meteor shower.
A meteor shower upon a field of steel snow.
And then I felt my surroundings bob away, gently, naturally-
guided.